Jim
Berwick, London-based Manager of Corporate Security for Pan Am in 1988, on a visit
to the Pan Am 103 memorial in Lockerbie.

Pre-trial hearings have
made it clear that lawyers for the Libyan defendants are prepared not only to
assert their clients' innocence, but to suggest an alternate version of events:
that the Iranian government and the Syria-based terrorists, the PFLP-GC, conspired
and carried out the bombing. There are also signs that an even more provocative
claim will get resurrected in the courtroom: that covert US government drug operations
may have provided the bombers an opening to blow up Pan Am 103.

In the early 1990's, Time
magazine and TV networks on both sides of the Atlantic produced major stories
exploring that claim. Their most important source: a private investigator who'd
been hired by Pan Am to find out who blew up Flight 103 and how they did it.
The investigator, Juval Aviv, emerged from his probe with a remarkable
claim: that members of the PFLP-GC took advantage of a controlled drug-smuggling
route involving US agents to slip the bomb on the Pan Am jet. Government officials
vehemently denied the assertion, and still do.

In response to Aviv's report,
Pan Am filed subpoenas with several US intelligence and law enforcement agencies,
seeking documents to confirm or refute the private investigator's findings. The
government refused to release the documents on grounds of national security.

"I was a consultant to the
FBI for over ten years on anti-terrorism matters," Aviv says. "Once I...pointed
the finger at the government, I became persona non grata, my arrangements with
the FBI were canceled. I just became a government enemy."

Some government officials
attacked Aviv's credibility, calling him a fabricator who had lied about his background.
The specifics of that accusation against Aviv don't appear to stand up to scrutiny.

Appearing on Britain's
Channel Four in 1994, former FBI Director of Investigations "Buck" Revell
was asked if US agents ran operations in cooperation with Middle East drug dealers
around the time of the Pan Am attack. "There was intelligence being gathered,"
Revell replied. "DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] assets were tasked
by orders from the National Security Council to try to develop intelligence information
on the American hostages in Lebanon. They were not used in conjunction with Pan
Am 103. That entire operation had been closed down."

But it appears
defense lawyers at the Lockerbie trial may try to prove otherwise –
that the DEA was running a covert drug operation on Pan Am flights
through the Frankfurt airport in late December, 1988.

Two men who were high-ranking
security managers with Pan Am at the time told us they've given statements to
the defense team claiming that they were told of a US government drug operation
on their airline, through Frankfurt, at the time Pan Am 103 was destroyed.

Jim Berwick was the London-based
Manager of Corporate Security for Pan Am in 1988. He says at a quarterly meeting
a couple of months before the bombing of Pan Am 103, Phillip Connolly approached
him during a break. Connolly was one of the highest-ranking investigators in British
Customs and a 20-year acquaintance of Berwick's.

"And it was at that
time that [Connolly] gave me the indication that he had been the British Customs
representative at a meeting in Germany, where there were representatives of German
Customs and also DEA, and where it became known to Phil that Pan Am in actual
fact was being used as a conduit or a route on which drug shipments were being
allowed from Europe to the U-S."

Jones says Connolly then
phoned a few days after Pan Am 103 blew up and asked if Jones had considered the
possibility that 'the bag' had been switched at the Frankfurt airport.

"And I took that to
mean – it was a gentle hint – that, had we thought about a substitution
of the controlled drugs bag," Jones says.

The man whom Jones says
made that call, Phillip Connolly, is now retired from British Customs. We couldn't
reach him for comment. A source close to lawyers for the Libyans says Connolly
has given a deposition and may be called as a witness at the trial.

Spokespersons for British
Customs in London declined to comment on the claims by Berwick and Jones. A US
Justice Department spokesman said the department would not respond to questions
about drugs on Pan Am 103.

"If there was...even
a smell of government involvement in [the bombing of] Pan Am 103, I'd be the first
one up snitching on the government," says Michael Hurley, who was the DEA's
top official in Cyprus in 1988. Even if government agents were running a controlled
drug route from the Middle East through the Frankfurt airport, he says, that would
not create an opportunity for terrorists. "When you do a controlled delivery,
you have control of the drugs from the point of origin to the destination,"
Hurley says.

Support for the drug claims,
however, comes from one more surprising direction. A senior source responsible
for overseeing the Lockerbie investigation for the German government told us that
if we wanted to get closer to the truth about Lockerbie, we should "go back
and look at the drugs." The source spoke on the condition that he not be
named. The remark is striking given that the German government, according to the
claims by Aviv and others, cooperated with US and British agents in the controlled
drug operation through Frankfurt. So the Germans would share in any embarrassment
if it were discovered that such an operation helped to facilitate the bombing
of Pan Am 103.